In a third generation partnership project (3GPP) system, there is a separation of physical and transport resource management. The radio network controller (RNC) is divided in two logical entities: the controlling RNC (C-RNC) and the serving RNC (S-RNC). The C-RNC is responsible for managing the physical resources in a cell, such as allocating timeslots and channelization codes to a specific user in the cell. The S-RNC is responsible for managing the transport channel (TrCH) parameters, such as determining the coding type, coding rate, puncturing limits, data rates, and transport block sizes. These parameters are part of the transport format combination set (TFCS) of a coded composite transport channel (CCTrCH).
In order to support a service request from the Core Network, a radio access bearer (RAB) is allocated for each service of a specific wireless transmit/receive unit (WTRU), and each RAB can be serviced by a CCTrCH. During the CCTrCH allocation, once the TFCS is determined for that service by the S-RNC, a request for physical resources is sent to the C-RNC. The C-RNC uses the TFCS as an input in order to determine the physical resource allocation for the CCTrCH. During this allocation, WTRU capabilities must be considered.
The capabilities of the WTRU are defined in classes in specification TS25.306, 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), Technical Specification Group (TSG) Radio Access Network (RAN), UE Radio Access Capabilities. Each WTRU signals its capabilities to the universal mobile telecommunication system (UMTS) terrestrial radio access network (UTRAN) RNC. WTRU manufacturers can decide which capabilities their WTRUs will support based on their own criteria, such as services to be offered, hardware cost, ASIC gate count, power consumption, etc.
However, the standards do not define a way to characterize the processing capabilities of a base station (BS). The standards also do not require the RNC to know the capabilities of the BSs and to take these capabilities into account when determining allocations for services. The RNC can make allocation requests to the Node B without taking into account BS capabilities, and it is left to the Node B to accept or reject the request. The standards also do not require the Node B to reject requests that violate BS capabilities. If the Node B does not reject a request that exceeds a BS's capabilities, the BS would likely fail to operate correctly, resulting in loss of service to existing users. The Node B is a logical entity of UTRAN which consists of one or more cells or cell sectors. In this context, a BS is the portion of the 3GPP Node B that provides the air interface and the processing for the air interface of a cell or cell sector.
Thus, it is desirable to provide a method for characterizing the BS capabilities and to use the capabilities for allocation requests and to avoid rejecting allocation requests.